Posted By Mike Klis On February 21, 2013 @ 5:04 am In General Broncos | No Comments

One of my all-time favorite Bronco players to cover was former cornerback Domonique Foxworth. He was both extremely smart (two degrees from Maryland in 3 1/2 years, while also taking on the full-time job that is college football) and not afraid to tell it like it is. From a media person’s perspective, there is no better combination.

Foxworth is now president of the NFL Players Association and he didn’t mince words when he explained during a conference call Wednesday why the union has not accepted the league’s proposal on HGH testing.

“We’ve had kind of a long history in our union and the league’s relationship and that’s deteriorated the trust between the two,” Foxworth said. “And the players don’t feel comfortable moving forward and I don’t feel comfortable moving forward without the proper protections in place. As far as I understand, there’s no good reason not to have those protections in place, so that’s kind of the hold up as far as HGH is concerned.

“H.G.H. testing that doesn’t give our players the opportunity to appeal, that’s just a nonstarter.”

Appealing is an important element of the NFL’s performance enhancement policy given the way unilateral way commissioner Roger Goodell tried to rule in the New Orleans Saints’ bounty case. Goodell’s punishment against players who were allegedly involved was most overturned on appeals heard by former commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

Said Foxworth on relationship between the players and the Goodell-led league: “There was a bridge beginning to be built (through the collective bargaining agreement reached in Julyu, 2011) and then there were some recent events that kind of broke that bridge again.

“We are asking for checks and balances to be put into place so when something happens like the Bounty situation, which it was found pretty clear — and we didn’t even have an unbiased person looking; we had a former commissioner look over and he found that it was unjust. So when things like that happen, it’s hard for our players to believe that the league has their best interests in mind and that makes it harder for me to do my job and the PA to do our jobs and the league to do their jobs.

“Everything we bring back to our players and they receive it from a negative place because they don’t trust anybody on Park Avenue, then it’s really hard to get anything done. I can’t, nor am I trying to, but I couldn’t if I wanted to, convince our players that you could trust Roger or you can trust the league.”